Thoughts on objects limits and the economy

fruitchew87

fruitchew87

Member
Hello guys! I just recently made a new Alpha update video where I touched on subjects such as object limits and the economy from the original TSO, and felt like talking to you guys about it. If interested, you can view the video here, otherwise, read on!

Object limits were always very, VERY difficult for me to deal with once I got my lot to max size. As a builder, and perfectionist, I had a vision for my house that didn't always seem to fruition due to object limits. I could make work arounds using a few build mode items, but every lot had a hard cap of stuff on the lot, no matter if it was from build or buy mode. I was always told that these limits were to ensure that people with lower end computers wouldn't have a hard time loading houses or from suffering lag.

With computers being where they are today, do you think that an object limit is necessary? What do you think about having a higher object limit? I'm not a techy person, so any insight would be great :)

Also, let's talk about payouts. As someone who always wanted to run a successful money house, payouts were something that I had to prepare myself for. I was player since the release of the game, and payouts were not a thing at that point. I wanted a money house more than anything from the very beginning, and was saving up the hard way. I wanted to do it on my own, and yes, it was very difficult. It took years... yes, years. I participated in countless competitions (and won nearly all of them!) and played pizza religiously. When I finally was able to get my house open for the public, payouts were in full swing, and I had saved up over 100,000 extra just so that I could accommodate them. My house lasted for one- maybe two days tops with payouts on that savings. I loved having such a busy house, but everyone was making large sums of jam boxes for, I think, a payout of 1k a box (which was on the higher end at the time). My house could not consistently stay open, and I was crushed. How did those other houses keep up with this ridiculous rate? Cheating? I don't know, but I do know that it made it very hard to keep a money house a float, which is pretty ironic if you think about it...

Do you guys think that payouts should make a return this time around? What rules of conduct should we expect from each other? I would love to hear everyone's thoughts on this.
 
Very interesting perspective on payouts. I joined TSO around the 2 year mark and I don't remember the payouts being too big at first. I played for a couple years after that and remember the payouts being at around 1k+. Truth is, game economies can be quite complex and it is hard for us to predict how things will be. With that said, I can imagine at first most money lots will not have payouts, being that there isn't much money flowing through the economy, but over time it will rise and payouts would come back.
 
vinnybod said:
Very interesting perspective on payouts. I joined TSO around the 2 year mark and I don't remember the payouts being too big at first. I played for a couple years after that and remember the payouts being at around 1k+. Truth is, game economies can be quite complex and it is hard for us to predict how things will be. With that said, I can imagine at first most money lots will not have payouts, being that there isn't much money flowing through the economy, but over time it will rise and payouts would come back.
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Hello vinnybod,
Thanks for your insight. I am definitely in agreement that payouts probably wouldn't come about right from the launch. Payouts can be very expensive, and I still am not 100% how people afforded it. I am aware that there were people with multiple accounts, but I still have had to wrack my brain to figure out how the very first person who implemented it afforded it. True, it didn't start out at 1k a sell, but even at 300-500 a sell, it adds up quickly... But, If I am remembering correctly, there was a bug that happened in the game that allowed for players to manipulate extra money from.

Actually, here, I looked it up and found this on Wikipedia: "In early 2005, The Sims Online faced a bug, which was discovered and quickly spread in use throughout the game. A clothing rack, that normally players would use to sell clothes to other players, duplicated the owner's profits several times with each use beyond what the other player actually paid. This exploit could be repeated as often as wanted until the bug was fixed. After a few days of this exploit in game, it was patched; however, the game's economy was completely destroyed, with massive amounts of inflation. Plenty of land and items lost value. This economic problem was not resolved for three years until late 2007 when EA-Land was formed and the game was wiped."

I remember hearing about this bug, but never really understood what was going on or how I could take part. I never experienced EA Land, so I can't speak on how the economy worked after the wipe. I would hope that payouts would have been too expensive for it, but since payouts had become such a huge part of the TSO culture, I can see payouts happening anyways, perhaps at something low, like $5 a jam box lol.

All I know is that at this point, I'm leaning against payouts. But, I also experienced them negatively, and perhaps I just wasn't cut out for it. I guess if anything, I know I can run a pizza house... I was a pretty darn good pizza leader :)

Thanks for replying, I know this may seem like a silly thing to worry about, but that's just how my brain works haha
 
Yes that exploit was terrible for the game's economy, but even before the exploit there were still houses giving away 1k payouts. I am just as confused as you on how owners were able to be profitable with that kind of giveaway. I ran a pretty successful lot in the entertainment category and don't remember ever getting too much money from having visitors. Maybe the money lots got paid a different amount than the entertainment lots, I'm not sure.

But hey, I do remember there being a house in Alphaville that was always full and branded themselves as "old school" and had no payouts. Not sure how they were able to do it, competing with the payouts, but they did somehow!
 
vinnybod said:
Yes that exploit was terrible for the game's economy, but even before the exploit there were still houses giving away 1k payouts. I am just as confused as you on how owners were able to be profitable with that kind of giveaway. I ran a pretty successful lot in the entertainment category and don't remember ever getting too much money from having visitors. Maybe the money lots got paid a different amount than the entertainment lots, I'm not sure.

But hey, I do remember there being a house in Alphaville that was always full and branded themselves as "old school" and had no payouts. Not sure how they were able to do it, competing with the payouts, but they did somehow!
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After running my old money house very successfully for a few days, I noticed that the visitor payout was chump change compared to payouts, even in a money house.
I also remember those "old school" money houses in Alphaville, but if I remember correctly I had already given up home-ownership for living with a friend in her money house so I never tried that route.

jkjoebo said:
im sure bots from this video kinda ruined the money and kept money houses going even into ea land
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UM, YEAH, thinking this could have something to do with it... OMG! Thanks for sharing that, I should have realized that extreme multi boxing isn't/wasn't just a WoW thing...

Seeing this, it does make me wonder about the way FreeSO will work... if it's a free game, then I wonder how many accounts people can/will make? Something to think about...
 
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Right now im happy to be playing on lots with others free building. Combating multi accounts will be challenge. Also if you think about how much per month he spent 10dollars x 20 accounts. 200 dollars of course selling extra money over ebay and profiting..this pratice been in games quite awile. Im worried once money gets passed in this fashion we would fall into gamble online catagory with casino objects. EA-land removed those objects to get around that
 
I remember seeing the bot houses ... they were easy to pick out ... always sims on the lot, always had doors locked, they ran 24/7. o_O
 
jkjoebo said:
Right now im happy to be playing on lots with others free building. Combating multi accounts will be challenge. Also if you think about how much per month he spent 10dollars x 20 accounts. 200 dollars of course selling extra money over ebay and profiting..this pratice been in games quite awile. Im worried once money gets passed in this fashion we would fall into gamble online catagory with casino objects. EA-land removed those objects to get around that
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I was just thinking about that... I can't believe anyone would pay for that amount of accounts. But then, I see WoW multiboxers do it for $15 a month, with no ebay gain. But, the entertainment value is a bit different there as well. I didn't think much about the casino objects... I never used them much, but I remember visiting a few casino lots that offered payouts on top of machines set to in favor of the player.... I made tons of money on those lots. They didn't stick around for long.

I do wonder if there is anything that can be done about multiple accounts in FreeSo. But then, I have no idea how that kind of stuff works, or if anyone else really cares enough. Not sure where I stand on it, honestly.

RainCloud said:
I remember seeing the bot houses ... they were easy to pick out ... always sims on the lot, always had doors locked, they ran 24/7. o_O
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I must have been really naive at the time, I had no idea this was taking place. I wonder if these houses were a mix of ebay sellers and/or players looking for tons of money for their houses.
 
It will be easy to detect multiaccounters. 15 concurrent authenticated users on the same ip isn't exactly subtle. :p

Not sure how we'd differentiate multiple people on the same network. I wouldn't like to make public any ideas for now.
 
RHY3756547 said:
It will be easy to detect multiaccounters. 15 concurrent authenticated users on the same ip isn't exactly subtle. :p

Not sure how we'd differentiate multiple people on the same network. I wouldn't like to make public any ideas for now.
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Ah, interesting! Once I was old enough to make my own money, I did pay for a second account, and played them both simultaneously, however, it wasn't for financial gain-- not totally anyways. I mostly wanted to be able to own a money house with my own personal house, and I enjoyed being able to be in two places at once. But, having a second account is definitely not the same as running 15+ accounts, boting for money.

Well, it's nice to know that you have some ideas for how to handle it. But, even if it's not feasible to stop all economy-ruining bots, at least we'll get to experience TSO again in its truest form again lol
 
In a more general sense, I think that we should split out anti-bot and auto-mod software out into plugins, and make the ones used in the main server closed source. This is really the only way to prevent abuse, because it is always easy to circumvent detection if you know what it's looking for. People using the open source server will have to roll their own detection.

LetsRaceBwoi said:
There's always the possibility of a LAN party...
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All connected to an internet server? I think it's reasonable to place some doubt in IPs with 4 or more concurrent connections.
 
RHY3756547 said:
All connected to an internet server? I think it's reasonable to place some doubt in IPs with 4 or more concurrent connections.
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Seems reasonable, yes. Since the software's also installed on the computer you could also check MAC addresses or check if the HWID for two clients is the same (HWID is unique for each PC as far as I know).
 
Would be rather easy to spoof. Want to rely more on a combination of behavioural analysis and source IP.
 
Back in the days of Boo's Hideaway, Sarah and I had 8 accounts total. We would Pizza by our selves in order to keep up with payouts. Most "true" money houses who didn't buy or use bots followed the same route. Also selling Ripe Fruit was an excellent source of income.
 
AidanM said:
Back in the days of Boo's Hideaway, Sarah and I had 8 accounts total. We would Pizza by our selves in order to keep up with payouts. Most "true" money houses who didn't buy or use bots followed the same route. Also selling Ripe Fruit was an excellent source of income.
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AidanM,
Thank you for this insight! I had a feeling something special had to be happening to keep up with payouts. I could never had afforded 8 accounts... but, I'm assuming you mean four for you, and four for her. I certainly wouldn't be able to pay that even now, as an adult. I'm curious on your stance on payouts... 8 accounts would be free this time around, but still, I'd imagine the work of constantly playing pizza got annoying... as fun as it actually sounds (and that's not sarcasm).
 
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